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Re: Individual sports are the only ones that count (IMO) Posted by Snowmobile [Email] (#686) [Profile/Gallery] (more from Snowmobile) on Thu, 22 Feb 2018 14:10:53 In Reply to: Individual sports are the only ones that count (IMO), Noel, Thu, 22 Feb 2018 13:41:03 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
I'm not sure that that is true. Some of those team sports (eg hockey in Canada) are so popular that just to get to that level, you have to be extremely elite as an athlete. Players like Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo in soccer, or Sidney Crosby in hockey can virtually pull out a win almost independent of the rest of the team. But superstars aside, all are athletes with a lot of grit and mental toughness or they would not be playing at that level. Many played other sports in their youth and probably still could (eg many wide receivers are good sprinters).
I would say though that some of the individual sports you see in the olympics, eg Bobsled, or speed skating, or biathlon, or whatever are late specialization sports... so you need a good base of athletic development appropriate to the sport and then you can tune the specific skills later. Some sports like soccer and hockey benefit from early sport-specific body mechanics that players best develop as youngsters (pre-teen) that are hard to really learn as deeply later such that they could break into the system (eg, would be hard to train an olympic runner to use skills as fluidly as Neymar).
On that note though, I miss having the NHL players in the men's hockey this time around... I think the competition has been interesting, but it is not quite at the same level as when all the superstars are present representing their countries. Of course, Canada has tons of depth in terms of all star NHL'ers but I say this not just from the perspective of wanting Canada to win, but more so from the perspective of having the highest level of skill and speed and intensity to watch!
->Posting last edited on Thu, 22 Feb 2018 14:11:38.
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